Looking over the small cluster of buildings in the Afghan desert, you prepare your binoculars. One, two, three guards patrolling; possibly more you can’t see. The red flag of the USSR billows in the wind above a particular building, right in the centre and modestly fortified. That must be where you need to go. Dismounting from your horse, you make your way toward the buildings. Right angles and peeking around cover are your best friends here, and the tranquiliser’s suppressor has limited use. Maybe it would be better to wait until night…

Eventually you sneak into the building. A radio is playing a 80s pop classic, and eventually you find your target. Go in guns blazing? That would trigger an alert, which is risky. Try to lure him out? Also possible. Or maybe you could tranquilise him, take him somewhere quiet and send him back to base with a Fulton Balloon, find out what he knows. Any option will work.

That’s a typical scenario during the first few hours of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Hideo Kojima’s long-awaited epic, which closes the loop around the Metal Gear franchise. We were recently invited to sit down and play through the first few hours of the game, which releases for pretty much every current platform in September. The newest Metal Gear game is unmistakably Kojima, and within a few minutes it was impossible to deny its roots. We were given complete access to the game and there are tons to talk about. Controller in hand, we started the game from the beginning.

Nine years after being seriously injured during the events of last year’s Ground Zeroes, Snake wakes up in a hospital bed to find his right arm missing, his body filled with shrapnel, and not a lot of things making sense. This is a long cutscene, but it’s all seen from the first person perspective, allowing us to move the camera around as the doctor explains what’s going on. Unfortunately, there is an attack on the hospital and Snake is guided through the hospital by fellow escaping patient Ishmael while the anaesthetic wears off. This is all playable and within minutes the stealth begins; we’re sneaking round corners, under hospital beds, and behind curtains to get by the armed troops laying siege to the building. Any cutscenes transition seamlessly into gameplay and aren’t very long at all.

The prologue is one of wackiest things to come out of the Metal Gear franchise, and fans will delight in seeing it play out.  It’s a strange affair, and it answers a surprising number of questions. After a fiery exit from the hospital we are rescued by Ocelot, voiced this time by Troy Baker. We’re treated to a small Indiana Jones-style segment where a dotted line traces across a map to Afghanistan. During a montage Snake is handed a new bionic arm to replace the hook he had in hospital, and the bandages are removed, revealing a huge piece of metal sticking out of his head, which doctors were unable to remove. It obviously looks like a horn, and this is to do with the game’s theme – that Snake is becoming a metaphorical demon, eventually becoming the monstrous antagonist for Solid Snake to battle with later on.

On arrival in the Afghan desert, Ocelot tells us “How you do it is up to you,” and to “let the legend come back to life”. From there it’s off to save Miller. Snake sits on horseback with what feels like the entire country in front of him, the camera moves over his shoulder, and we’re handed control.

Stunning visuals, high-res textures, and a fully functioning day/night cycle - all at an unflinching 60fps.

The Afghan landscape looks amazing, with the rocky environments looking almost photo-realistic. The game’s day/night cycle is in effect almost all the time, and the game basically never dips south of 60fps. This is truly something that has to be seen, as Metal Gear Solid V looks gorgeous in motion.

During gameplay, the most useful piece of equipment available to you is the iDroid, returning from Ground Zeroes. You can use it to call in your helicopter, arrange for an item drop, peruse the map, set markers and listen to any of the cassette tapes you’ve acquired. The game doesn’t pause when you look at it and you have to use it carefully and wisely, which helps keep you on your toes.

Metal Gear Solid V is most definitely a modern stealth game. Like Deus Ex or Dishonoured, you are simply told an objective and then you’re free to tackle it how you wish. This openness extends to the mission structure. You complete mission 4, and then missions 5 and 6 will open up simultaneously. Interestingly, each mission has its own opening and closing credits, beginning with a list of the characters in the mission and ending with a staff roll.  After mission 6, missions 7-10 will all become available for you to tackle in any order, and so on.

Upon selecting a mission you’re taken to a loadout screen. Here you can customise Snake’s clothes, weapons, items, and a buddy. Buddies are AI partners that can help out, and each time you complete a mission with them their rating with you goes up, presumably unlocking more commands for them to do. The first buddy you get is the horse, and your trusty steed is invaluable for covering the huge distances seen in the Afghanistan section of the game.

When you deploy, you can choose to deploy in the day or night (0600 or 1800). My personal loadout included the Night Vision Goggles, and deploying at 1800 meant that by the time I was reaching my goal night was falling. Enemy sentries have far greater vision during the bright day than they do at night, and so a night-time infiltration is often easier to do, and the Phantom Cigar lets you speed up time to wait until night time. You have so many choices in this game.

Once you’re in the field, you’ll find all sorts of flora and fauna, including wild wolves. You can use the always funny, always useful Fulton Recovery Balloon to capture pretty much any living thing you’ve tranquilised, and you can grab or interact with almost anything you see. Want to switch off that searchlight? You can. Want to destroy that satellite? You can, and when you do you’ll stop the local team of guards from making contact with HQ. Various herbs and plants can be used by your team back at Mother Base to upgrade everything from the effect of the Phantom Cigar to creating healing items.

Once captured and taken back to base using the Fulton Recovery Balloon, you can take your trusty canine companion with you on your next outing.

Guards and animals that have been Fulton’d are delivered to Mother Base and can be seen walking around when you go back there. If you want, there’s nothing stopping you from turning the place into a zoo, just because. The guards you employ can be put to good use in creating and upgrading tools for you to use, and there are a whole host of options. You can add artillery to your helicopter, and you can even equip the helicopter with loudspeakers to play any of the tapes you’ve uncovered. Amazingly, these tapes are often actual 80s songs – when hunting the elite Spetsnaz operative in one of the missions he’s blasting Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” track from a nearby radio. These tapes can be stolen from the radios and put through your helicopter’s brand spanking new loudspeaker upgrades, meaning that before long your enemies will tremble in fear as your battle-ready chopper rains down on them while blasting out “Take On Me”.

These upgrades are “bought” using GMP, and if your team is a high enough level. GMP is a kind of currency which can be found in the game world in the form of various metals, and for the big bucks, found as diamonds. What’s cool here is that you can lose GMP for messing up, such as when an enemy sentry spots you and triggers an alert. There are a lot of options for you to spend your points on, and once your team has reach high enough levels in certain stats, you can start to research the real game-changers, including one very special bonus item which has been in every single Metal Gear Solid game.

Metal Gear Solid V is massive and full of secrets. People will be discovering new things for years, it seems – there’s way more to talk about than I can possibly say here. This is a revolutionary step forward into the modern era for the series, but with its quirky nature and its unmistakably distinct director, Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain still has the classics in its genes. We can’t wait to get our hands on it this September.